← All Of It with Alison Stewart
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- [00:00]
A
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B
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. For much of her life, cartoonist Julia Warts didn't think too hard about having kids. It really wasn't part of her plans. But then her in her 30s, Julia got pregnant by accident. As she wrapped her head around this idea, she had a miscarriage. Julia and her partner Oliver decided to try again, this time with intention. This was 2019 and Julia couldn't have predicted that months later she would give birth to her son Felix at the height of the COVID pandemic in the spring of 2020. In a new graphic memoir, Julia chronicles her pregnancy journey and just what it was like to be a New mother in 2020, facing a pandemic, wildfires near her home in California, and mental health struggles within her extended family. The book is called Bury Me Already. It's Nice down Here. Comics on pregn pregnancy and parenthood. It's out today and Julia joins me in studio. Hi Julia.
- [02:03]
C
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [02:05]
B
And by the way, Julia has a book release event tomorrow at Books Are Magic, Montague street location at 7pm and at Rizzoli bookstore at 6pm on April 16. There are so many illustrations in this book. They capture a wide variety of your pregnancy, your motherhood experience. A lot of humor here. How did drawing help you make it through your pregnancy?
- [02:27]
C
Oh, I don't really know any other way to do things to get through hard times except to turn it into a funny drawing or make a joke out of it. Sort of the way I process My life, I guess. But it's funny, as you were describing all that stuff, I felt a removed sense, like I was hearing it as if it was someone else's book. And I was like, wow, that was a crazy thing that person did and lived through. But it doesn't feel that crazy in the moment, I think.
- [02:54]
B
You point out that this isn't just a memoir about becoming a mother. You write about relationships within your family. With Oliver Covid, mental health. Why was it important to you to expand the focus?
- [03:07]
C
I don't love parenting books, not to disparage anyone else's work, but I find most of them incredibly boring. And I want to hear about who they are as people behind the story, what else goes on in their life. And I. So I didn't want to focus on just the pregnancy and parenthood stuff because people don't tell you when you're gonna go through pregnancy and parenthood, that your life keeps going. All the stuff that's gonna happen still happens. And you have to figure out how to deal with that just while you have a baby. And I feel like there's no good way to prepare for that. And I wanted to really show people that life keeps going. It doesn't stop. Even if you are in a bubble, that bubble gets burst, and you still have to deal with all the real life stuff outside of that. And that just feels insane when you're going through it, but it's how it is.
- [03:54]
B
You could have never known that you would give birth during the pandemic. So many women had to. So six years later, what do you carry with you from that experience?
- [04:03]
C
I'm a little bit resentful, actually, about all the things I missed. I didn't have a baby shower. I didn't take birthing classes. When my kid, for the first year of his life, it was just us at home, and we went out and did outside stuff with friends. I'm just. I'm resentful of all the milestones that I thought at the time was like, that's fine. It's lame. I don't want to do those. And then I. When I didn't get to do them, I was like, but I was kidding. I want to do all of them. I want everyone to buy me stupid infant clothes that I'm not even gonna wear and get rid of. So I'm just not resentful. That's not the right word. I'm a little sad that I missed out on that stuff. And I got Zoom Married on the couch, which is very on Brand for me, unfortunately. But I don't, you know, I don't want to always be on brand stuff. I wanted to have a traditional kind of at least a party, but that's all. I just missed some stuff.
- [04:53]
B
Listeners, we'd like to hear from you as part of this conversation. Specifically those of you who are parents or mothers who gave birth during the pandemic, like Julia, what do you remember the most about that experience? Our number is 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. How did giving birth during a pandemic affect how you think about pregnancy or mother? Tell us what you carry from that experience. Our number is 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. The book begins just a few years after you've moved back to Northern California from New York, back where you grew up. You didn't really want kids.
- [05:34]
C
Yeah, yeah. I was never anti kids. I've always thought kids are hilarious. They're so funny. They are funny. If you don't understand why kids are funny, you're really missing out on something. Yes, they're annoying, but that's fine. So I've always liked kids, but I really didn't think it was for me. I was following an artistic path. I was gonna keep following that path. And then I know everyone wants a bigger answer for what changed my mind, but there really isn't. It was just a sort of slow burn of like, I guess I want this. And then I did it.
- [06:08]
B
One of the things I thought was really funny in the book is you address that you're in your 30s and you go to the doctor and he's gonna call it a geriatric pregnancy.
- [06:17]
C
Yes.
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B
It's one of the scariest things. And every time you go back, they repeat it, and they repeat it, and
- [06:23]
C
they repeat it so much, I think they love saying it. I think they kind of get off on it.
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B
What did it mean? Did that have. Did that affect your decision about having a child when you realized I'm, quote unquote, a geriatric pregnancy, I might not be able to do this in five years?
- [06:40]
C
No, I think. I think my, like, teen sort of angst kicked in, where I was just like, oh, you said, I can't do this. I'm gonna do this, and it's gonna be fine. And then it wasn't fine. But, yeah, I didn't really let that get in my way. I also. It's so offensive. I would just kind of let myself be mad about that as opposed to my personal situation.
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B
So your mom, your mom wanted kids, grandkids.
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C
That was a surprise to me as well.
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B
Why was that a surprise?
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C
Because she was always. I would. My whole life, I'd just be like, what if I don't have kids? Would you be okay with it? And she was always like, oh, I'm fine. It's fine. It's up to you. It's your choice. And then when I did tell her I was pregnant, she told me she'd just been pretending that pretending to be okay with whatever I wanted was fine with her. But she did really want me to have a grandkid.
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B
So it's interesting in the book, there are two kinds of drawings in the book. There are sort of the finished beautiful drawings here and then there are these kind of stick drawings.
- [07:36]
C
Yeah, stick figure drawings.
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B
Can you explain to our listeners what that's about? Why there are two kinds of drawings in the memoir?
- [07:42]
C
Yeah. So the sort of professional answer I give for that is that they're quick diary comics that I'll make on the side of my real work just so I can remember stuff later. And then I eventually turn those into real comics. And I just decided to leave some of those in the book to sort of give the. The feeling of how rushed and how things were. But then the real answer is that I was too lazy to draw all of them out like I'm supposed to. And so I was like, but what if I tell everybody that it's just to show how rushed everything was? So it's a cheat.
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B
And they're funny, though. It's interesting to see the difference between the two, I think.
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C
Yeah, I do think there's something extremely silly in Raw about this stick figure stuff that when I do draw it fully fleshed out, it kind of loses that silliness. Even though my final art is a little silly too. It just. I see it happen. I see it go from like, extremely goofy and then it sort of loses the magic by the time it's fully drawn. So I like to leave that in there.
- [08:40]
B
We're discussing a new memoir, Bury Me Already. It's nice down here. Comics on pregnancy and parenthood, written and illustrated by my guest cartoonist, Julia Wirtz. Julia has a book release event tomorrow at Books Are Magic on Montague street at 7, and then she'll be at Rizzoli Bookstore on April 16 at 6pm we're also hearing from you. If you're a mother like Julia, who gave birth during the pandemic, what sticks to you sticks with you the most about that experience? How did it change the way you think about pregnancy or motherhood? What do you want people to know about that experience? Our Phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. This text says, my postpartum hair loss started right as Covid was getting going. It was really hard to distinguish if it was stress or just postpartum hair loss. No one talks about how much that postpartum hair loss really affects your self image.
- [09:32]
C
Yeah. And it comes back in as, like, baby hair. Another thing no one tells you. Yeah, they're like. Or also that your kid might lose all their hair. So it's like, I felt like my kid was losing his hair in the first three months, and he just had a weird Danny DeVito situation going on. No one told me that that would happen. And at the same time he was losing his hair, mine was coming back as baby hair. And I was like, what sort of black magic is this? Like, what is happening? Why do I have his hair all of a sudden? Yeah. And no one tells you that you're just gonna look silly for a while.
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B
Did that bother you even though you were by yourself looking different?
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C
I mean, maybe that was one of the benefits of the pandemic, was that nobody saw anything. It didn't bother me just because I've always. I've never figured out what to do about hair, so I've always just put it under a hat, and so it didn't. But I understand when people have fabulous hair and that's been a thing for them, and then they don't. I feel like that could be hard. But I was just like, oh, well, here's another hair problem. Just stick a hat on it and move on.
- [10:28]
B
Let's talk to Mina calling in from Hopkong, New Jersey.
- [10:32]
D
Hi, Mina. Thanks for calling all of it.
- [10:34]
B
You're on the air.
- [10:36]
E
Hi, this is Nima here, and just wanted to let everyone know that I didn't give birth during the exact Covid period, But it was 2022 when I did give birth. And even then in the hospitals, they didn't really allow the grandparents to come in and visit. You weren't allowed as visitors. So that whole, like, imagination of, like, you know, having the family around to see the baby just wasn't there. And, you know, the baby was in nicu for just a couple of days, five days or so. But not having any family coming and help me out was kind of, like, a little lonely. And, of course, I'm Bald now, and my hair never grew back, by the way. But it is what it is. You know, sometimes Korean hair products do help, by the way.
- [11:25]
C
Oh, good tip.
- [11:26]
D
Good tip, Mina. Thank you so much. Did that have resonance for you?
- [11:30]
C
Yeah, I was not allowed to have anyone. I was barely allowed to have my partner in there a few weeks before we went in to give birth. They were not allowing anyone in except the person giving birth. And then they realized that's actually really traumatic and awful for the person giving birth to be doing that alone. But my mom is a birth instructor. She's a Lamaze instructor and a postpartum therapist, so she was ready to be. And then she couldn't be there. We did end up having. He had a heart issue and there was an emergency C section. So it's one of those things where I was so disappointed she wasn't going to be there. But in retrospect, you're like, oh, that might have actually been worse had she been there, because that might have been traumatic for her. So you just don't really know how things are going to pan out. But, yeah, we were denied a lot of things that everyone else got kind of harkening back to what I said, being a little bit resentful of those things. But you also have to acknowledge that a lot of people just don't get those things, period. So for us to be like, I didn't get this extra privilege is really unfair.
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B
It's interesting, the emergency C section. It's a thing. I had one.
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C
Oh, yeah.
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B
It's like they were like, came out of the ceiling. Like, they rappelled out of the ceiling. The doctors. Right.
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C
Suddenly there's six of them.
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B
They're everywhere. They take you down a hallway as soon as they talk to you, very kindly like, oh, we're gonna do a C section. As soon as you say yes. It's like, game on.
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C
Yeah. Well, they were quite panicked with his. Yeah. And I didn't. I've had friends who had emergency C sections, and I guess there's an emergency and then there's an emergency. And we were an emergency with, like, lights on, the hallway were flashing. And then it was just like a full surgical team was there. It was very. Happened very fast, and it was very panic inducing. And then a doctor came in and he's like, this is a little guy with all hands on deck. And you're like, all hands are on deck.
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F
What.
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B
What were the first words that your partner said to your child?
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C
Or about my child or about your child, as they were Pulling him out of my body. He said, he's a monster. And those are the first words. And even in my very drugged state and I couldn't move, I heard him say that. And I knew, even though I was so upset and hysterical in the moment, I was like, that was funny. That was a funny thing to say. He was, too. He was disgusting. They're gray. People don't tell you they're gonna be gray. Why was he gray? Their fingernails are long and white. They're just. They're so gross.
- [13:46]
B
I'm talking to Julia Wirtz, all about pregnancy and parenthood. Her new memoir is called Bury Me. If you're a mother like Julia, who gave birth during the pandemic, we want to hear from you. What sticks out to you most about that experience? How did it change how you think about pregnancy or motherhood? What do you want people to know? What it was like? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We'll be right back. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Julia Wirtz. Her new graphic memoir is titled Bury Me Already. It's nice down here. Comics on pregnancy and parenthood. Julia has a book released tomorrow at Books Are Magic at Montague street at 7pm and she'll be at Rizzoli Bookstore on April 16 at 6pm we also want to hear from you. Not if you're driving, though. Please don't call us if you're driving. If you're a mother like Julia, who gave birth during the pandemic, we want to know what was that like? How did it change how you felt about pregnancy or motherhood? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We got Dan on the line calling from New Jersey. Hi, Dan. You're on the air.
- [15:10]
F
Hey, Allison. Good to speak to you again. Fun, fun little fact. I was on get lit with my band a couple of years back, and it's great to be back on the show.
- [15:19]
G
All right,
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F
so, yeah, I'm not a mom, obviously, but we had our kid back in September of 2020. So that was basically the whole pregnancy was defined by that first year of the pandemic.
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B
Oh, my gosh. How did that. How did that work out for you?
- [15:36]
F
You know, it was pros and cons. Like I said. I was a. I was a live music performer, so that was. My entire industry was completely shut down on hold, which had a silver lining because I got to be around, you know, as with my wife, and we got to walk around all the many parks of New Jersey like I'm, like I'm doing now, but at the same time, like mentioning family, being excluded from things. I was lucky to be at the birth, but I missed almost every ultrasound appointment. Just wasn't allowed to be in the room for that. So definitely some separation, some change.
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B
Yeah. How's the kid?
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F
Oh, kid's great. Yeah, he's doing fantastic. We have a second one and thinking about all that envy, you know, and the regret and the grief of it. I mean, with the second one, we're able to do all kinds of normal stuff, go to restaurants and stuff like that. So it's. It's a little bittersweet, but. But yeah, you know, I think we weren't as affected as like the parents of the older kids who I really felt for, you know, middle schoolers, high schoolers, in a lot of ways it wasn't even really that different, I guess, looking back on it now. But I think it affects how we think about health going forward. You know, like it took us a while to get a babysitter. Years, years and years.
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B
Dan, thank you so much for calling in.
- [16:52]
D
Thanks for your help with get lit. By the way. You're like, dan, you have a creative career. How is your creativity, your creativity or your identity changed after you gave birth?
- [17:03]
C
I had to put my career on hold for almost a solid year because like you said, there's no babysitters, there's no daycare. And I do wonder if that might have happened anyways, just because having an infant is. You're not gonna just then also have a full time job. But I do really like what he said about acknowledging that people with older kids, I definitely think they had it harder, especially if you had, I mean, like a toddler or a young kid, which is a very difficult age, or a kid at a very specific development age. I think that that was way worse for them to be at least isolated during that time than in my situation, a mother with an infant. Because you're just kind of naturally gonna be isolated a little bit. Except I wanted to socialize so bad. I just, I was like, I want everybody to come over and breathe on him, which you're not supposed to do. I just wanted people around me. But yeah, I do think that there are parents who had it extremely, extremely difficult, like just having young children.
- [18:03]
B
Let's talk to Jesse, who's calling in from the catskills Hi, Jesse, thanks for taking the time to call.
- [18:08]
D
All of it.
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B
You're on the air.
- [18:10]
G
Yeah, thanks so much for taking my call. I related to the story so much because I also kind of was like, never sure about having a kid, but then in my late 30s, kind of just decided to have one. And I totally had my kid during the pandemic. So it was May of 2020, and it was just really shocking and like, you know, all the plans I had in place, I just kind of had to change them and like, the sort of whatever that thing is, seventh hour, last hour, ninth hour, whatever it is, you know, And I also felt 11. Thank you. I knew none of them sounded totally right.
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C
It doesn't matter.
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G
And I just. But like, I also totally miss having a baby shower, even though I thought I was too cool for having one and all that stuff. But one kind of weird silver lining. You sort of talked about the hospital thing a bit and like, I was, you know, looking forward to having, like, my mom and my doula and all this stuff, but then birth was so dramatic. So I feel like not having anybody there, like, at least my, you know, family or whatever wound up being kind of a silver lining because it just would have been so insane to have, like, family there after. You just have like, the most amazing. But like, for me, I just had like a kind of traumatic birth experience. So, like, to have people there for that, I just. That would have been crazy, I think. So that was kind of like a weird. A weird silver lining for me.
- [19:32]
C
Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, we were only in the recovery thing for maybe two days. Had it not been Covid, we would have been there longer, but they just wanted us out. And I didn't sleep for any of that. If someone had walked in and wanted to chit chat, I would have been like, get out. So that worked out.
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B
How did you balance feeling alone versus lonely?
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C
That's a. That was a tricky one because they are two very different things. And I think that I definitely felt lonely, not just alone for some of it, because I wasn't able to see a lot of people who I would have really loved to see and confide in. But I did have a group, my group of friends who thanked the Internet. We were talking constantly all day long on a forum or texting. And that helped me to not feel so lonely. The physical loneliness of it sort of when you're alone didn't really bother me so much because that's kind of the natural state of a cartoonist is just to be alone all the time.
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B
Yeah.
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C
But like I said, I had this switch where I always thought I was an introvert. And then I had a kid and I'm like, everybody come over. Let's party all the time. I want to do all the things. I want to stay up late, I want to go out. And I thought that would wear off, actually. But I do think it fundamentally changed. Being a person who is introverted and is fine being alone, I find being alone, I have to be alone all day to do my work. But I am much more social as a parent than I was before.
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D
Still, you still that way?
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C
Yeah. I was out till like midnight last night. It was crazy.
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B
Let's talk to. I think it's Laina in Maplewood. Hi, you're on the air.
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E
Hi.
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H
Yes, it's Laina. Thank you. So my younger daughter was born March 20, 2020. So we were one week into staying at home. And when I tell people her date of birth or I fill it out on a form, people just look at me like, oh. And I know exactly what they're going to ask. They're going to ask, was your partner there? What was the hospital like? Was it scary? And, you know, like, now I just call my daughter Covid years old. That's how I keep track of how long ago Covid started and that's how old she is. Covid years old. And I had plans for my maternity leave. I was going to watch all the TV and my older daughter was supposed to be in preschool, and that was a huge change. It was very challenging and I was sad not to share her, share the baby with everyone. And, like, she was a wonderful baby. But, I mean, if it had been my first, it might have been a disaster because I had postpartum anxiety. But the second time around, I knew more what to expect. And I also, like, started meds right away, so that was like, totally so much better. I'm glad that it was my second one during that time. But this group of kids, these Covid years old kids, they are unlike any other age of kids. Like, I'm a preschool teacher, an early childhood professional, and these kids are wild.
- [22:43]
D
When you say wild, what do you mean?
- [22:46]
H
They're just like, I. It's so hard to explain. They're. They're like, they're in their own mindset. They do what they want to do. They're like, they're outspoken. They just only kind of. They started out living this life that was. That was just very different from other kids.
- [23:09]
B
Thank you so much for calling in. That was an Interesting topic.
- [23:12]
C
Yeah, I know. I was like, oh, what's she gonna say are the different. I think that might be more of a parenting thing. I don't ever want to say anyone's parenting right or wrong, but I was very careful to give my kid what is normal. Like, we hung out with friends on weekends. We hung out. We broke the rules pretty quickly. I'll just. I don't know. We did. So we did hang out with people. And he got socialized early. And he did begin daycare. I think he was 10 months old. He began going to an illegal home daycare down the street.
- [23:44]
B
Well, you touch on that. About. About childcare, one of Mayor Mamdani's biggest political cause causes. What did having a kid reveal to you about childcare in America?
- [23:56]
C
How crazy expensive it is, how little we pay our childcare workers. That really blew my mind. It's like we pay childcare workers and then, like, social workers, the people who work with the most vulnerable and the youngest, the least amount of money. And these are the people we should be taking care of the most. And the people who are doing that should be able to make more than a living wage, I think. So that really surprised me. But, yeah, also how inaccessible it is. It's just we're in a small town, and some of the daycares that were open were like, oh, it's from like 9 to 12. And I'm like, what am I going to do with three hours? I can't have a job in three hours. So I was calling those, like, the vanity daycares, which, honestly, I would have taken had they not been so crazy expensive. And we just got really lucky that there was a daycare worker who had lost her job from the pandemic and started her little home daycare situation right down the street. And it was very affordable. But I'm not saying everyone should put their kid in an illegal home daycare. That's not a great move.
- [25:00]
B
Let's try to get one more call in. Tamarinda is calling in from Summit, New Jersey. You have about a minute, Tamarinda.
- [25:08]
F
Hi.
- [25:08]
E
Thanks for taking my call. I have so many different reflections about what it meant to, you know, give birth during COVID I actually. I've had three children since COVID with my first in 2020. And what really strikes me is the difference in how I feel equipped to show up for new birthers. So, for example, you know, we're taught to accept, expect, you know, the support of the village when you rear children. And for those of us who gave birth during those early years of COVID we didn't have that support system just innately built in. And I think that there may be, at least for me and some of the other birthers I'm familiar with during that time, a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. We don't really know how to show up for other birthers in the same way we didn't get the baby showers, as you were just speaking of. We didn't have, you know, people doing meal trains and coming to our home and lifting us up in that experience in the same way. And younger brothers are now looking to us to kind of show them that path. And we don't necessarily have that skill set. And it's becoming more and more obvious, unfortunately.
- [26:21]
D
Thank you so much for calling in in our last moments. Your last picture in the book is of Oliver reading to Felix.
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C
Yeah.
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D
Why did you make this the last picture in the book?
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C
Because that was a benefit of the pandemic, is my partner did stay home and he wouldn't have been able to otherwise. He was home for a few weeks in the beginning and actually for like three months, but he was fully off. And I would walk by the room and just kind of glance in and see him reading to a baby, which is from the outside of the view. So dumb. Like, he's a baby. You're like, you can't. He doesn't know what you're saying. But of course you read, too. It's what else are you gonna do? And it was so sweet. And it was just one of those little moments where I was like, oh, he's gonna be a good dad. And so that's kind of, oh, no, I'm crying. Aww. No one's asked me about the back page yet, so I haven't even had time to explain it. So thanks for asking.
- [27:12]
D
The name of the memoir is Bury Me Already. It's nice down here. Comics on pregnancy and Parenthood is written by my guest, Julia Wirz. She's a book event tomorrow at Books Are Magic, Montague street at 7pm and Rizzoli Bookstore on April 16 at at 6. Thanks so much for.
- [27:27]
C
Thank you. I'll probably cry then, too, so get ready.
- [27:30]
D
And thanks to all of our listeners who called. There's more. All of it on the way. The independent news program Democracy now is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Amy Goodman founded the show and her story is told in the new documentary Steal this Story Please. She joins us in studio along with the film's co director, Carl Diehl. That's happening after the news.
- [27:53]
A
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